


Accidents Happen

by Thistlerose



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, Challenge Response, F/M, Gen, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-23
Updated: 2012-01-23
Packaged: 2017-10-30 00:46:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/325922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thistlerose/pseuds/Thistlerose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for Omniocular's 2006 AU Extravaganza.  Prompt: Trelawney's first prophecy is complete tosh, and when Voldemort is finally killed, it's not by Harry. Not even by a Gryffindor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Accidents Happen

Harry had come to a dead end. "Damn," he said as his gaze raked up and down the brick wall that blocked the other end of the alley. He wished now that he'd let Hermione teach him how to Apparate, but he'd been afraid of losing a limb – and besides, they'd had little free time on their hunt for Voldemort's remaining horcruxes.

"Damn," he said again, and considered his scant options. He could send up a flare, he supposed. Ron and Hermione might see it. But they didn't know that Voldemort was at his heels – summoning them to his side now could mean summoning them to their deaths.

He could levitate over the wall, but, despite the dark of night, the chance of Voldemort spotting him while he was airborne was too great.

He could hunker down behind the three metal dustbins that stood in the alley, and hope for the best.

Squatting low, he could see the street that ran perpendicular to the alley. Light from a nearby streetlamp did not illuminate much, but at least Harry would be able to see Voldemort before he himself was spotted - _if_ he was spotted, he thought without much hope.

The dustbins – and the alley itself – reeked of fish, moldy paper, and cat piss. He could feel the fish, slimy and cold, flicking along his skin, but he knew that it was only his own sweat. He clutched his wand.

Why did his breath have to be so loud? And why did his blood have to charge through his veins like a sodding river? Didn't they know that they were going to get him into trouble? He couldn't hear the street beyond the alley.

Voldemort came out of the dark like a train pulling into an Underground station; red eyes appeared first, like headlights, then the face as pale as bleached bone, and the robes billowing around him. Harry's scar seemed to writhe like a fiery snake; he bit his lip to keep from crying out. Blood dribbled down his chin.

"I know you're there, Harry," Voldemort hissed from the curb. "Come out and die like a man, not a craven coward. Your father did not hide from me. He knew that there was no escape for him – as there is none for you."

Harry swallowed a retort and the urge to spring to his feet. He had only a few seconds left, perhaps, but—

"I grow tired of this game!" Voldemort snapped and raised his wand. A gesture, a word, and the dustbins went clattering away from Harry, spilling their foul contents all over the alley floor.

Slowly, knees trembling, Harry rose.

"That's better," Voldemort said. "Come to me now, and we shall finish this."

But Harry's legs seemed to have frozen. "You come here," he said, and was annoyed with the way his voice rasped – then ashamed with himself for caring. "You've been chasing me so long, you can bloody well keep doing it."

The thin lips curved in an unpleasant smile. "Very well. Stand there and accept your death, Harry Potter."

Wand still held aloft, Voldemort stepped off the curb and into the street.

There was a deafening BANG! and Harry was thrown off his feet. He fell face-first into the spilled rubbish, and his wand slipped from his sweat-slicked grasp.

He was on his knees a moment later, scrambling for his wand and wondering why he wasn't dead. His hand found something long and slender, but it turned out to be only a broken knitting needle. Bugger. What had happened, anyway? Why wasn't Voldemort killing him while he was unarmed?

"'Choo lose something?" said a familiar voice.

Harry looked up. A violently purple, triple-decker bus filled the street outside the alley. Under its gigantic wheels lay a crumpled, black-clad form.

"Phaugh, you reek!" Stan Shunpike commented, waving a hand in front of his nose. "'Choo rolling 'round in rubbish for?"

"I dropped my wand," Harry spluttered, his gaze roving from Stan's pimpled face to the body beneath the Knight Bus's wheels, and back. "I thought you were in Azkaban!" he said stupidly.

"Nah, let me out months ago. No evidence again' me. Dincha 'ear? Where you _been_?"

"I was," Harry began weakly. "That is, I was…"

Voldemort continued to not move.

"I," Harry tried again, but the words would not come.

"'Ere," said Stan, and helped him to his feet. "There's yer wand. You _did_ flag us down, dincha?"

Harry picked up his wand and stuck it in his belt loop. "I."

"You," Stan prompted.

"Er." Harry swallowed. "When you stopped, you didn't feel a - ? No, I reckon you wouldn't." Stan was looking at him quizzically. "It wasn't me," said Harry. "I didn't flag you. I—" He pointed to the bus's wheels. "Don't you realize what you've done? You killed Voldemort!"

''Ere now," said Stan, backing up a pace. "Don't say 'is name!"

"Why _not_?" Harry shot back. "He's _dead!_ You just killed him! _Look!_ "

Stan looked.

"But that ain't You-Know-'Oo."

"Yes, it is," Harry insisted. "Look. _Lumos._ " He held his lighted wand close to the body. The head was like a burst honeydew melon. " _Look._ "

"'Choo show me that for?" Stan demanded, looking ill. "Can't be You-Know-'Oo. You-Know-'Oo can't be killed."

"Yes, he can! I made him mortal! I spent all these months making him mortal again, and you—you— _Look at him!_ " Harry's voice was getting shrill.

Stan looked closer. "I'll be," he said after a moment. Then, to Harry's bewilderment, he bounced up the steps of the Knight Bus and yelled, "Oi, Ern! You'll never guess 'oo we just 'it!"

*

"This isn't happening," Harry said, some time later, at the Leaky Cauldron, where Stan and Ern were buying drinks for everyone who'd been on the Knight Bus – and everyone who happened to walk into the pub, too. "I'm hallucinating. Or dreaming. Pinch me."

Ginny pinched his ass.

"Are you actually _complaining_?" asked Hermione. "Voldemort is dead! Who cares who did it?"

"But the prophecy," Harry said. "Trelawney's prophecy."

Ron licked foam off the rim of his glass. "So, Trelawney's prophecy turned out to be tosh. Wouldn't be the first time, I reckon."

"I knew she was a fake," said Hermione smugly.

"But she _can_ make real predictions," Harry insisted. "I saw her do it once. She made a prediction about Wormtail, and it came true."

"What was the wording of the prophecy? I mean, the one about you killing Voldemort?" said Hermione. "'Either must die at the hand of the other, for neither can live while the other survives.' Well…"

" _Well_?" grumbled Harry.

"Well," said Hermione. "Er. All right. If you hadn't been in the alley, he wouldn't have accidentally summoned the Knight Bus, so really— Well, I always said Divination was utter rubbish!"

The twins sauntered up to their table just then, bearing another round of drinks. "So," said George as he passed glasses around, "how does it feel, Harry, being a mere nobody after all these years?"

"He's not _nobody,_ " said Ginny loyally.

"Honestly," Harry said. " _I_ stopped him from getting the Philosopher's Stone. _I_ killed his bloody basilisk. _I_ stopped him from getting the stupid prophecy. Well, we all did – and Neville and Luna. _We_ found all the stupid horcruxes and destroyed them, not—" He pointed at Stan who, on the other side of the pub, was regaling a pair of very pretty young women with his heroic tale.

"Yes," said Fred, "but think about Quidditch. The hero is the one who caught the Snitch – or got the Quaffle in, not the one who passed it to the bloke who got it in."

"I got it in," said Harry. "It just bounced off _him_ before it went in!"

Remus had come up behind the twins. Though shabbily dressed and weary-looking, his smile was as warm as Harry had ever seen it. "Your parents would be very proud of you, Harry," he said. "So would Sirius and Dumbledore. I'm very proud of you too."

"Yeah, well," Harry said, and finished his beer.

"You can't honestly tell me that it matters," said Hermione. "The important thing is that Voldemort is dead."

"I know," said Harry. "It's all right. I'm glad. Really. Just a bit… I don't know. Amazed? Befuddled?"

"Look at Scrimgeour, fawning over there," chuckled Ron. "He was embarrassed enough when he had to pardon Shunpike. Now he's got to let him into the Order of Merlin."

"S'all right, Harry," said George. "We still think you're brilliant."

"That's good enough," said Harry, grinning at last.

"It'll have to be," Fred said with mock solemnity. "Because it's all you're getting."

But it wasn't all Harry got. Sometime later, when the others were distracted by a sudden influx of reporters from the Daily Prophet, Ginny grabbed Harry by the back of his t-shirt, and drew him aside. In a shadowed doorway, she put her arms around him and whispered silly things – about how he would always be _her_ Chosen One, and how she had a saving-herself-for-a-certain-person thing - until he laughed and stopped caring about Trelawney's prophecy. Ginny's slim fingers and warm, eager lips were all the reward he needed.

Still, it rankled a bit when, the next morning, Stan and Ern Day was proclaimed throughout the land.

09/02/06

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](http://pics.livejournal.com/thistlerose/pic/000c4b9s/)


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